The Internet has fundamentally changed the way many items are sold. Not so long ago, dealers of items such as motor vehicles acquired motor vehicles for sale by physically attending the sale or auction and bidding on the items they wished to purchase for their own inventory. Physical presence allowed the dealers to inspect the items thoroughly before purchase or bidding. The dealers or their representatives could literally or figuratively “kick the tires”, observe damage such as dented fenders or cracked windshields, and make a fairly accurate determination of what would be necessary to repair or refurbish the item to maximize resale value.
Now, many motor vehicles and other items are sold over the Internet. Instead of physically traveling to the site of items for sale, it is now increasingly more common for dealers and other potential purchasers to view information about the items over the Internet or other network connection having computer or other display equipment, and then place bids or purchase orders electronically. Such remote purchasing creates a demand for full and accurate electronic, remotely-viewable documentation of the items for sale. While written descriptions and condition reports of used items for sale can be useful and informative, at least some prospective purchasers wonder whether the written descriptions tell the whole story. In addition, writing detailed condition reports is fairly time consuming.
Anyone who has ever been disappointed by a purchase by mail order or on EBay will understand that more information is better—especially for high ticket items such as motor vehicles, boats, motorcycles, real estate, motor homes and other relatively expensive items. Photographs are now absolutely essential as providing full documentation of relatively expensive items for sale. Looking any any vehicle auction site such as autotrader.com or ebay.com, one finds sellers posting fairly extensive set of photos of their vehicles for sale. Sellers often try to photograph their vehicle from all sides as well as providing photos of the interior. Some sellers also photograph the engine and other parts of the vehicle that are damaged (e.g., rust spots, dents, etc.) to give the buyer a full understanding of the condition of the vehicle. The sellers do this because they have found that buyers are more likely to purchase cars they have never physically inspected if the buyers can view sufficient photos to get a complete understanding of the condition of the vehicle.
For this reason, it is now common for written condition reports to be accompanied by one or more photographs of the new or used item being offered for sale or auction. While photographs can be altered, if a trusted party takes the photographs, the prospective buyer can have a fairly degree of confidence that the photographs accurately document the condition of the item.
While it is fairly straightforward for a good photographer to fully document the condition of any new or used motor vehicle or other item, this process can be time intensive and therefore expensive. Anyone who has ever attended a vehicle auction knows that often there are many vehicles placed on the auction block and that the vehicles move very rapidly through the auction process. In the past, staff that collects condition reports would visit an auction or other site where motor vehicles were offered for sale in advance, and use a digital photographic camera to photograph each motor vehicle to be auctioned. The photographer would photograph each vehicle from a variety of different angles. In case of vehicles having damage or imperfections, the photographer might take special photographs documenting those particular areas of the vehicle or other item. The photographer often needed to work with an assistant whose job was to carefully take notes so that the appropriate photographs could be matched up with written condition reports. The photographs and written condition reports would then be used to create a presale catalog which could be online or offline. In the case of online documentation, the photographer would upload the set of photographs for each vehicle to a server or other computer for further distribution over the Internet or the other mechanism to prospective purchasers. Such a largely manual and time-intensive process often needed to be performed relatively rapidly to ensure that appropriate documentation would be made available to prospective purchasers in advance of the sale or auction. This largely manual process was therefore relatively expensive and sometimes inefficient—especially when a large number of vehicles needed to be photographed for a particular auction. Time constraints leading to sale day along with volume and efficiency are important factors.
From the perspective of prospective purchasers, complications or issues could arise when different vehicles or other goods were documented differently. For example, different photographers might take photographs from different angles. Different photographers might use different equipment with different image resolutions. Lighting conditions could change with the weather (especially for large items such as motor vehicles that are typically stored outdoors on an auction lot) to create even more non-uniformity. Often, the photographer would not move the vehicle to photograph it, and other extraneous objects (other vehicles, fences, etc.) would end up being included in the background of the photographs Such non-uniformities could be distracting and make it more difficult for a prospective purchaser to compare different items with one another to make a more fully informed purchasing decision—especially in the context of a fast-moving auction when a dealer or his representative typically spends only a few seconds making a purchasing decision and then moves on to the next vehicle. These inconsistencies were also objectionable to the selling party. Their goal being to present vehicles in the best possible light, poor images are a poor reflection on the product.
It would therefore be highly desirable to create and provide an automatic photographic documenting system and method capable of providing high resolution, uniform images of new and used items for purchase or auction quickly and cost-effectively.
Some of us have had our pictures taken in a photo booth at a shopping mall or a fair. Photo booths provide an enclosure which limits the camera's field of view and prevents other people and objects in a crowded environment from being included in the photos. Photo booths typically take a series of photos in rapid succession using artificial lighting (e.g., a flash lamp), and print out a strip of photos immediately. Some photo booths may provide captured images in digital form on digital media. While photo booths are fun to use, it is not apparent how one could adapt this technology to photograph large inanimate objects such as motor vehicles.
The technology herein succeeds by providing solutions that are advantageous, efficient and highly cost-effective. Exemplary illustrative non-limiting implementations are capable of fully documenting the motor vehicle external condition within a few seconds and automatically and rapidly uploading the resulting images to a server for immediate or prompt display and distribution to prospective purchasers. Automated naming is also a factor here.
One exemplary illustrative non-limiting implementation for particular use with new or used motor vehicles provides an enclosed “photo booth” structure with automatic doors at each end. The doors could be roll-down or other automated doors including for example non mechanical doors or other structures that block ambient light. A vehicle is driven up to the enclosed building. A bar code on the vehicle is read by a laser bar code reader or input manually and a computer-based operating system automatically, in response, populates a computer monitor screen with the vehicle information previously entered into the computer system during the condition report writing process. The vehicle is then driven into the enclosed building. Computer-based tracking technology automatically tracks the vehicle's position as it is driven into the building, and advises the driver where to stop the vehicle so it is centered within the building. For example, as the car is entering, the computer system projects on the wall of the far end of the booth directions to the driver instructing him when to stop the vehicle. These directions may be generated based upon tracking devices such as ultrasonic, laser or other tracking systems—for example one located at each end of the booth—that are programmed to measure the length of the car, the location of the car and which interface with the computer system to direct the car to stop in the precise location desired for each of multiple (e.g., six) cameras installed in the booth to take a picture of the vehicle in the correctly cropped format. In the exemplary illustrative non-limiting implementation, the cropping is achieved by controlling the cameras zoom function and zooming to the appropriate level.
When the driver stops the vehicle as directed, the system automatically closes roll-down doors to prevent ambient light from entering the enclosure and to eliminate extraneous objects outside the enclosure from the field of view. The system then sends zoom instructions to each camera (based on the vehicle dimension/configuration obtained from the vehicle tracking system) to provide correct field of view/cropping parameters so each camera captures a nearly ideal image that does not need any post-processing or enhancement. The system then instructs the cameras to take photographs and each camera does so. Such photographs may be taken after dimming or extinguishing certain lights within the photo booth and using an automatic high intensity halogen (e.g., flash based) lighting system to achieve high contrast and uniformity and color corrected lighting. Because every vehicle is photographed by the same set of cameras (using appropriate zoom control based on the particular vehicle's dimensions) in an enclosure with appropriate light illuminating sources, the system achieves uniform lighting results each and every time. Furthermore, because an ultrasonic or other position tracking system reliably tracks vehicle positioning and controls camera operation, it is possible to ensure very uniform photographic images while accommodating objects of different lengths and dimensions (e.g., an SUV or town car have very different sizes and shapes as compared to more compact motor vehicles). Provision is also made for taking photos of the interior of the vehicle—andadditional photos of other vehicle features and conditions in a human technician's discretion.
Once the photographs are captured and a human operator approves the results, the far door of the photo booth opens and the vehicle can be driven out of the booth. The pictures are then promptly or immediately uploaded onto a computer system, and can be promptly or immediately posted to an Internet web site for example, where the vehicle is offered or auctioned for sale.
Exemplary illustrative non-limiting implementations of the technology herein provide several advantages including for example:                consistent, high quality images,        multiple images with correct field of view,        no distracting objects in the background,        appropriate high contrast and uniform lighting irrespective of outside ambient light conditions,        simple interface not requiring highly trained employees,        robust system that operates quickly and efficiently,        capability of uploading images substantially simultaneously in the unified transmission in a short amount of time for correlation and identification of preexisting profile information,        use of ultrasonics or other positional tracking technology to track object position and to ascertain and compensate for different object dimensions and configurations,        automatic computer-controlled digital zoom control provides automatic cropping/field of view control at time of image capture to eliminate need for extensive post-capture processing,        internal photo booth uniform grey finish assists in providing uniform contrast and background.        